Akari and Gideon helped the Healers load Bam and the girl into the truck, and the other Healer strapped himself in on the back bench to keep an eye on them for the trip.

  Afterward, Danielle turned to Ranger Michael and asked, “Do they really have to do something about it? About the armies and all the rumors, I mean?”

  Ranger Michael sighed. “They want to, but it’s hard to just ‘do something about’ people not trusting you enough to accept a warning you give,” he said. “We have to wait until they go beyond believing something unacceptable to doing something unacceptable before we can respond to action with action. We have, at least, informed the organizers of those two parties that it is illegal for them to operate as armies inside Firmitatem territory, and that we won’t rescue them if they’re so foolish as to attempt it in anyone else’s territory. So far, though, they haven’t tripped the wards.”

  “I see. Well, it’s nice to know there are some limits beyond which the Authority will actually step in,” Danielle said. She yawned. “I’m going to get back to building seven. If nobody’s checked in on anyone in the bottom two floors, they need checked on. I’m not putting it off to tomorrow when it’s already been put off for two days.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re tired!” Akari protested. “You’re yawning and everything!”

  “I’m not too tired to save lives, Akari,” Danielle said. “It’s just two floors. I can make it.”

  Akari groaned, but didn’t protest as Danielle led the way back around the tent to the stairs. Gideon jogged a few paces to get ahead of her, and Jordan took rear guard. Ranger Michael returned to the tent at first, but as they started working their way along the front of building one’s ground floor, he came out and lounged against one of the corner support pillars, watching them work.

  It was difficult work, mentally more than physically. Like most of the buildings, building seven had eight inhabited rooms per side. Jordan’s room had been one of them. Of the other seven, only two didn’t have any need for assistance. Danielle washed and sterilized fifteen more canteens, took four more temperatures, and had to call Ranger Michael in again once. Akari, Jordan, and Gideon also washed mugs and even heated soup in one room where nobody had eaten supper yet.

  The back row was just as bad. They found several rooms where the boys seemed to have given up, like Jordan’s roommates. Danielle talked her way in and did what she could. She washed and sterilized another sixteen canteens, and urged their owners to drink, even staying long enough to have the canteens drunk empty and refilled again in one case. In one room, she showed someone how to use the little camp stove for the soup. She thought of Ezra, and reminded him to stir the soup while heating it.

  In another room, Akari ran the shower the whole time they were inside, explaining afterward that the boys had been using their bathtub as a urinal without “flushing” it at all. Danielle only had to call Ranger Michael one more time, but she took eight temperatures. In the last room, one of the boys actually tried to attack her, and her System told her she activated Combat Medic before his roommates grabbed him and calmed him down. Danielle didn't even remember gesturing for an activation. Akari had to be the one to use Sterilize Object on a familiar-looking little camp cook pot that had been left unwashed a bit too long when everyone decided they were too tired to cook.

  She stepped out into darkness, utterly exhausted. Ranger Michael was leaning against the nearest corner support once again, now with a lantern dangling from the crook of one arm. “Exhausted yet?” he asked.

  “I wanna say I’m never too tired to save lives, but I might be gettin’ there,” Danielle said. “On the other hand, I’m out of mana, and time. Definitely wake people up if I continue. Prob’ly won’t answer th’ door.”

  “I wouldn’t blame them,” Ranger Michael said, hopping down lightly into the walkway.

  “This’d be a great time to have a mana tomato or two so I could activate Infrasight,” Danielle said. “It’d be an even better time to have Trait: Infrasight.”

  Ranger Michael nodded. “It would, but since you’re not there yet (and your friends definitely aren’t either), I brought a light.”

  “Thanks. Are you gonna charge me a visit to building 5?” Danielle asked.

  “Can you make it?” Ranger Michael asked.

  Danielle laughed. “I hope so, it’s on my way home!” she said.

  “We need to drop off the guys, too, though,” Akari said.

  Ranger Michael nodded. “Let’s take a slightly winding path. First across to five, then over to one, then diagonally to six.”

  “I can live with that,” Danielle said.

  “Is it worth living with it, though?” Gideon asked tiredly.

  “Psh, it’s no worse’n Flo made me do on Sunday night,” Danielle said. “At least this time I’m not goin’ delirious.”

  “Are you sure?” Akari asked.

  “I’m as sure as I can be from this side of my brain,” Danielle said. She thought about it as they walked around the end of building seven, and up the stairs. “I think I said that wrong. I was trying to say it’s hard to tell if you’re delirious when you are delirious. I still don’t think so, though.”

  “I understood,” Ranger Michael said. “Let’s stay quiet now.”

  Danielle actually tried to activate Bubble of Silence before she remembered she was out of mana. “Hate running out of mana,” she muttered, but quietly.

  Ranger Michael provided the privacy Skill so the whole building wouldn’t hear him reciting the required script for the door assignment, then he led the four of them to building 1. Jordan let them into Tom’s room, where they found everyone else asleep, including Ezra in the fourth bed. Gideon sketched a tiny note on a corner of Ezra’s sketchpad, and made Jordan promise to point it out if Ezra seemed worried in the morning. Then he headed down two doors to his own room. Ranger Michael waited long enough to see him open his door before he led Danielle and Akari back to the stairs, then they went around the end of building one and through the alley, across the paved space between buildings, and finally down into the walkway of building six.

  When they got around to 6024 and quietly opened the door, they found Heather and Sadie awake and fretting. “Where have you been?! We were worried sick!” Heather demanded, far too loudly.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “I carried four more stretchers,” Akari said.

  “What?” Heather was so taken aback, she literally leaned back, which allowed Akari to edge around her where she was blocking the opening from the counters to the bedroom. She belatedly realized she was in the way and stepped a half-pace to the side, behind the counter with the half-wall. Akari took advantage of it and immediately made a dramatic flop onto her bed.

  “Nobody’s been doing med checks for building seven’s lower floors,” Danielle said. “Jordan’s roommates are in that zone. So I did the bottom floor of seven, and we found three cases that needed to be called in, and while we were in the area, Ranger Michael asked us to come be same-gender manhandlers for a girl in building five.”

  “I ran both mana pools dry, and I’m exhausted. I’d say don’t wake me for anything, but I know my alarms are going to do that anyway,” Danielle concluded with a sigh, sinking down on her own bed. She wanted to flop, too, but Ranger Michael had followed them in (that was a security loophole she needed to watch out for) and was loitering in the kitchen for some reason.

  “Before you go to sleep, then, I have a quick question for you. Also Healer Orellana, actually,” he said.

  “Ask it and begone,” Danielle said dramatically, waving her hand in what might have been a regal manner if she wasn’t so exhausted.

  Ranger Michael chuckled. “How many days in a row have you bottomed out your mana, and have you gotten any notifications about it?”

  Danielle blinked at him, then checked her Interface and groaned. “Is there no end to these silent notifications?” she asked.

  “It could just be another pox-mana Skill, but please check for me,” Ranger Michael said.

  Danielle checked. It was not a Skill. “It says, Trait: Improved Mana Generation unlocked and applied due to emptying a mana pool five times in a ten day period without using internal redirection Skills or Traits. Trait building mana availability: 100/100. Trait ready and active.”

  “Ah, brilliant. It’s the overachiever’s trait and a pox-mana bonus,” Ranger Michael said.

  “That is so unfair,” Heather said.

  “Hey, you emptied a pool today,” Danielle said. “And now you know the requirement. How many days to go?”

  “Two,” Heather said. “How are you even up to five? Wait, does it count your pools separately?”

  “It doesn’t even count emptyings separately,” Ranger Michael said. “It counts days in which a pool has been empty at some point during the day, full stop. I’m guessing she emptied pools for the urgent Skill tokens, though.”

  “Yep,” Danielle said, “Hadda do forty tokens on Saturday b’cause of Karen, and then Sunday was just,” she gestured vaguely, “all the tokens. Don’ worry, though, Heather, easy to use up your mana tomorrow. Just do the rounds again, an’ if you don’t run out, then we tackle building seven, floor one this time.”

  “Um, well, I mean, is that something advisable?” Heather asked.

  “Yes, it’s fine,” Ranger Michael said. “It’s a pretty small improvement at level 1, though if it levels up it can get pretty impressive at high levels.”

  “I bet it’s a big Healer thing,” Danielle said. “Usin’ up all the mana in emergencies an’ stuff.”

  “It is,” Ranger Michael said.

  “I don’t even know how to level a Trait,” Heather said uncertainly.

  “Ah, well, most Traits level the same way most Skills do – they absorb roughly ten percent of the mana we channel through them, and when it’s enough to level up, they do. For crafting and healing Skills that use tokens, the token mana contributes a smaller percentage; that’s how Danielle leveled her Skill Sharer Trait with only a few hundred tokens. There are also a few Skills and Traits that just don’t have higher levels, though; the simple Mana Improvement is one of those. It only appears as a reaction Trait, usually during the Youth stage of System development; it puts a flat multiplier on your mana generation and pool size, and it never changes. Improved Mana Generation is the third kind; it appears as a reaction Trait, responding to certain conditions. I think there’s more than one option for this one; but regardless, it only levels up if one of those conditions happen again.”

  “Bet the right kinda Healer levels this one waaaaay up,” Danielle said.

  “Healers, Enhancers, Mana Casters, and Element Shapers are the big ones,” Ranger Michael said. “How many of those things are you, out of morbid curiosity?”

  “All of them!” Danielle responded. “Kinda. Mana Caster is debatable. Healer also debatable I guess. Unclassed, but I have relevant Skills.” She had a sudden thought and sat up. “Hey, am I going to survive the Speeds? And whatever the third one of the Big Three is?”

  “A valid question,” Ranger Michael said. “For anyone else, I’d say yes, no problem. For you? I would honestly start hoarding Skill tokens, because at the rate you’re growing, you’re going to need to do that massive new-ability grab again when it hits. The good news is, we pass out food and medicine crates for all of the big three, but we only do the medically-relevant Skill tokens for the first one, whichever that happens to be.”

  “So they won’t need me for tokens, for certain,” Danielle said. “Why hoard tokens, not just mana?”

  “In case you’re half delirious when you realize what’s happening, and your friends have to take you to the Access Point and help you slap tokens in. You want your emergency supply to be stuff it’ll be nice to have, but you won’t regret waiting for; you want it to be as big as your full base mana generation, with all Trait multipliers; and you don’t want to have to make choices while you’re in emergency mode. If you can get up to the 1.5 times generation level, that’s even better – beyond that, the benefits seem to plateau pretty fast.”

  “I guess I’ll do that with the profits from selling people extra medically-relevant tokens,” Danielle said.

  “Don’t tell Agent Apira I said so, but that sounds like an excellent use of mana,” Ranger Michael said. “You’ll know it’s time to use it if your mana generation ever starts going up without even putting a status effect in your Interface. Oh, and the speeds includes diarrhea, so it’s even more important to keep hydrated.”

  “Greaaaaat,” Danielle groaned.

  “Please tell me that’s not coming soon,” Heather said, in similar tones of voice.

  Ranger Michael chuckled. “Good news; it’s usually a fall disease. It tends to hit with cooling weather,” he said. “And the better news is, the last of the Big Three is influmanza, which doesn’t get worse with high mana generation at all. It’s also a cold-season disease, usually hits in winter. It’s the longest-running and generally the most serious of the Big Three, but it has a low mortality rate in populations where everyone infected is at least base level 3.”

  “What does base level have to do with it?” Sadie asked.

  “Influmanza tries to steal your production,” Ranger Michael said. “It only has so much capacity, though; people with enough mana generation to feed it full can avoid the worst symptoms. In most cases, it tops out at 15 mana absorbed per day, and if it can get it all from your pools, then it’ll mostly just be like a case of regular old-fashioned influenza. It’s most dangerous when you don’t have that generation, and it tries to take mana from other parts of your System.”

  “Can you treat level 2 people with, say, Ranger Gretel’s cheese?” Danielle asked curiously.

  “Can and do, yes, and the little purple tomatoes. With level 1 people, though, we usually treat by trying to help them level up, so we can treat them as level 2s from there. Anyway! None of that is crucial information for tonight. You girls get your sleep, and Danielle, we’ll see you at the tent tomorrow evening.”

  “Yeah, see you then. Goodnight,” Danielle said. Ranger Michael gave a casual wave to the rest of the room and saw himself out, closing the door firmly behind himself. “I’m gonna nap until midnight,” Danielle said. “If the adrenalin wears off fast enough, anyway.”

  “What adrenalin?” Sadie asked.

  Danielle laughed. “The adrenalin from literally wondering if the next epidemic was going to kill me because I overused mana on this one,” she said. “It was a scary thought, and I was reeeally hoping for a simple ‘no, that definitely won’t happen’ but that is not what he actually said.”

  “Oh. At least he gave you a plan for making it better?” Sadie said uncertainly.

  “Yeah. I’ll get to work on it tomorrow,” Danielle said. She toed her boots off and rolled back onto the bed, still clutching her staff, though she couldn’t have said why.

  “I’ll get the light,” Sadie said, and Danielle heard the rustling of someone getting under a blanket, someone repositioning on a bed, and Sadie padding to the kitchen to turn off the lights.

  “Are you sorry you did it, now?” Akari asked.

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